Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The term ‘puritan’ became current during the 1560s as a pejorative nickname for Protestants who, dissatisfied with the Elizabethan settlement of the church by the Act of Uniformity of 1559, would have subscribed to the contention of the Admonition to Parliament of 1572 that ‘we in England are so fare off, from having a church rightly reformed, accordying to the prescript of Gods worde, that as yet we are not come to the outwarde face of the same’ ( Frere and Douglas 1907 : 9). Puritans were distinguishable by their dissatisfaction with the rites and ceremonies of the Elizabethan church and by their desire to continue the process of Protestant reformation, halted in mid-career in England, they believed, in the compromise of an established church which retained government by bishops and a liturgy still modelled on that of Rome. They never, however, belonged to a single sect or constituted a clearly defined group within or without the episcopal Church of England. Drawing on native Lollard traditions which, despite sustained persecution, had survived in popular culture since the early fifteenth century, and fired by the zeal of exiles who, having fled during the reign of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (1553–8), now returned inspired by their experience of the reformed practices of Jean Calvin (1509–64) at Geneva and Johann Bullinger (1504–75) at Zurich, puritanism had no one founder, ... log in or subscribe to read full text